Your Flight Instructor as an additional insured on your aircraft insurance policy.

I  received a call from a customer who wants me to fly with him in his airplane this coming weekend. Typically I like to take Sundays off but knowing this person, I understand his business interests keep him busy 6 days a week as well, and the only time he has to fly is on Sundays. He needs to get a few approaches in and do some crosswind landings. When we spoke I requested that he call his insurance company and have my name added as an additional insured on his aircraft policy. A few hours later I received an inquiry form, from his insurance broker, requesting all of the information they typically collect.

As I was filling out the form I came on the fields looking for the date of my last Biennial Flight Review and instrument Proficiency Check. I’m a dick about details so I pulled out my logbook to look it up. I was confused about both because I thought my session at the FlightSafety this past April would have counted as my IPC and getting my ATP back in November 2010 would have sufficed for my Flight Review obligations.

On further review I checked the yellow card from FlightSafety and noticed the absence of the checkmark on the line that said FAR 61.57(d). Now I know that the Sim we used in Wichita has the same limitations as our FMX in Danbury with regards to conducting an IPC. The FAA doesn’t let allow either of us to count landings from a circling or straight in approach. FlightSafety’ s work around is the same as ours, we do 90% of the things we need to do to satisfy the IPC in the simulator, then we must go out in the airplane and do some landings from approaches.

During the week I spent in Wichita, I did twelve hours of Simulator time as pilot flying, twelve hours as pilot not flying, and two hours in the airplane with three approaches and nine landings. That satisfies the letter of the law for an IPC and I was wondering why Tim (My instructor at FSI) hadn’t checked the box next to it. On reviewing the card I did notice that Tim had checked the box next to Biennial flight review so I put that date into the form for the insurance.

Looking back through my logbook to determine the last time I did a formal IPC it dawned on me. My ATP practical test this past November was done completely under the hood. I called a few folks asking them if I was off base assuming that I could and should use that date as my last IPC. We all agreed that it did, so I put in that date and submitted the information.

In the past I’ve had instructors ask me to put them on our Mooney’s policy when they had flown with me and always viewed it as a nuisance.  Now that I instruct in Other Peoples Aircraft regularly, I understand the wisdom of putting this in place.

In my experience I have found that insurance companies will do their level best to minimize their exposure to your claims.  It’s the part of their business they dislike the most, the paying claims part. Having fallen victim to this with innumerable different insurance products and policies, spanning my entire adult life, I know that not having this all lined up at the moment when the inevitable unforeseen circumstance occurs can have a detrimental impact on your claim.

If you own an airplane and fly with independent flight instructors putting the instructor on the policy as an additional insured protects you as the owner from having the insurance company deny payment. Most people assume that the instructor is covered by the “Open Pilot Warrantee” and need not be added to the policy. This is a poor assumption as most owners’ policies prohibit any commercial use of the airplane. Paying your instructor to fly in your airplane makes your lesson a commercial endeavor and invalidates warrantee, hence the instructor is then not covered by the policy.  If the instructor is an additional insured, the insurance company is unlikely to subrogate to someone who they actually cover on the policy.  A waiver of subrogation keeps the insurance company from attempting to collect damages from your flight instructor should he/she be present in the airplane when God forbid you should have an accident.

This is a better option for both the instructor and you, than just having the instructor carry their own policy. I’ve posted some information on our website that I received from the EAA about all of this http://www.fullmotionflight.com/TrainingPrograms/AircraftTraining.aspx . At the end of the day just to be safe, and name your instructor as an additional insured on your policy.